Awaking One Another
by quillsncream
Summary: Kylo Ren attempts to interrogate Rey, but finds a power in her unlike any other. Intrigued, he sets out to teach her, and make her his, despite the Light that shines so fiercely through her. Rey wants no part of the Dark side, but not everything about her captor seems Dark. In the end, who will be the one who changes the other? Rated M in advance for later content.
1. Escape From Jakku

Awaking One Another

Chapter One: Escape From Jakku

"We were not able to secure the droid on Jakku, my L-lord," the Imperial Lieutenant confessed, "The BB unit escaped in a Corellian YT-1300 light freighter that was in the settlement."

"The droid alone took command of a freighter?" Kylo Ren questioned, annoyed that the lieutenant had obviously not revealed everything to be known about the droid's escape to him immediately.

"Forgive me, my lord! We have eyewitness confirmation that the traitor FN-2187 was seen with the droid entering the freighter, sir."

 _FN-2187, again!_ Kylo's anger and hatred swelled to the surface, and he quickly drew his lightsaber and began to strike at the control panels and displays that surrounded him, destroying them in the process. _I saw his weakness!_ He thought wildly, while letting out a shout of rage that caused the frightened lieutenant to jump. While berating himself internally and striking the walls, Kylo Ren could think only of how he should have had that traitorous turncoat brought before him immediately upon returning from the village to see him killed for weakness. Now, in addition to having freed a highly valuable Resistance captive, the former Stormtrooper was keeping the highly sought-after BB unit safe, and quickly taking it out of the First Order's reach.

In the midst of the Sith Lord's tantrum, the lieutenant shifted uncomfortably, seeming to be in the midst of making a difficult decision.

"My lord," the lieutenant finally conceded, "Another was seen accompanying the droid and FN-2187, a girl of—"

Whatever the lieutenant had to say next about the girl was suddenly cut short, as he found himself a foot off the ground, and with the grip of the Sith's dark power around his neck, cutting off his air supply, and flying him towards the seething man.

"What. Girl." Kylo demanded to know, his voice full of malice and contempt. What little girl from Jakku could possibly resist the ground and air assault on the outpost near the crash site of the stolen TIE fighter? Who could have the knowledge to pilot such a ship? Who would dare to defy the might and cruelty of the First Order?

"Our inf-, augh, informants say that it was a local, a scavenger that helped them escape!" the lieutenant struggled to answer while trying to get air past the choking grip on his throat, "She piloted the freighter, destroying the fighters we had pursuing them!"

"FIND THEM!" Kylo yelled ferociously at the lieutenant while releasing him from the force choke and throwing him backwards. The lieutenant quickly got up and ran out, spewing panicked promises and reassurances of success while making his exit.

Kylo Ren stalked out of the room he was in, frightening everyone out of the main walkway as he made his way to his private quarters. After his door slid shut behind him, he hastily took off his mask and outer robe before wielding his lightsaber. He let its power thrum through him for a few moments, before gripping it with both hands and hitting the already scar-ridden wall with it, over and over, covering it with fresh marks. As he assaulted the wall, his anger slowly calmed, and his thoughts became more coherent. He found himself wondering about this girl, this pilot, who survived the assault, commandeered a freighter, out-piloted her pursuers, who had _escaped_ , and who, wittingly or not, had his prize in her possession. Having exerted enough of his anger and hatred on the wall, Kylo made to begin meditations. But as he tried to internalize his fear and hatred, to shut out all other thoughts, his mind kept going back to the lieutenants words. _A local. A scavenger. A girl._ What girl? Who could be more competent than his highly trained Stormtroopers programmed from birth? _Who is she?_

* * *

At that time, not so far away, Rey was staring slack jawed in the direction of THE Han Solo, smuggler extraordinaire. The smuggler in question had just pulled them into hyperspace, just narrowly avoiding death. After getting the Corellian light freighter off-planet, the ship had been locked onto and pulled into a large freighter's ship hold, where shortly after meeting the smuggler, they had been set upon by three forces. Two gangs who had been swindled by Han, and by the beasts he had been acquiring for them. They had only barely escaped, due to Han's insane plan which involved jumping to hyperspace within a ship. She turned to look behind her at Finn, the Resistance fighter she had met on Jakku, and who had effectively made her a target of the First Order. He was nursing a couple of scratches from Chewbacca, the giant Wookie first mate of the infamous smuggler.

Rey made her way over to the Resistance fighter to take a look at his and the Wookie's condition. "Can you believe it, it's Han Solo the smuggler! He made the Kessel Run in just 14 parsecs! In this ship! The Millennium Falcon!" She exclaimed loudly, unable to keep a silly grin from taking over her face, completely forgetting that she had, not more than a few hours ago, disregarded this ship as being 'garbage'.

"12 parsecs!" She heard Han's voice yell out, seemingly insulted, from the entrance to the cockpit. The smuggler stared at them intensely for a few moments, before letting out an exasperated sigh. "So, you two are fugitives?"

Rey, having forgotten how exactly she had come to currently be in front of Han Solo in all the excitement of actually meeting him, located BB-8, and went over to the droid. "Yes," she confirmed, suddenly solemn. "Finn says that this droid has the map to where Luke Skywalker is. We need to get it back to his Resistance Base, on D'Qar in the Ileenium system."

The smuggler stared cryptically at her for several moments. "Luke, huh. Hmph, all right. I'll get you two to the Resistance. We need to make a stop though, the Falcon's not exactly subtle," Han conceded before moving back into the cockpit to readjust their heading. "We're going to Takodana to see Moz Kanata. She'll get you three a ship that'll get you to the Ileenium system," He called out from the cockpit.

Accepting that solution, Rey sat herself in the copilot seat next to the smuggler, hoping that this would all be over relatively quickly. She had already been gone from Jakku for too long, and she didn't want to miss her family coming back for her. They would come back for, she knew they would.

* * *

A/N: That's all for now folks. We'll see more Rey-development as she interacts with Kylo Ren in future chapters, as my story moves away from what happened in the movies.


	2. Attack on Takodana

Chapter Two: Attack on Takodana

Kylo Ren walked briskly through the halls of Starkiller base, heading towards the large chamber used for communications with Supreme Leader Snoke. Accompanying him in sneering silence was General Hux, in all his pompous and narcissistic glory, whom the Supreme Leader had also summoned. Not wishing to listen to the insufferable General talk more than he had to, Kylo refused to say anything to him, and the General did likewise.

Upon entering the communications chamber, a comm channel with the Supreme Leader was opened, and almost instantly his dark and menacing form was projected before them. The two young men bowed and then kneeled before the Supreme Leader in reverence, waiting for his permission to speak.

"So," the Supreme Leader began. "Explain what exactly has happened with the droid that possesses the last piece to of the map that will lead us to the infamous Skywalker," Snoke said, knowing full well of their failure, but wanting to hear it as acknowledged by them.

"P-please, Supreme Leader," Hux pleaded, knowing his life could very well be on the line if he could not explain himself, "The droid did manage to escape, with the assistance of the traitorous Stormtrooper and some local from Jakku." General Hux swallowed uncomfortably, "Also, we, uh, we have reason to believe that the ship they are in is heading for the Resistance hideout, and we still do not know where that is, sir."

The Supreme Leader did not look pleased, to say the very least. "You incompetent fools!" he bellowed. "They will find Skywalker! He will return to bring an end to the First Order! We must secure our hold on the galaxy, before the Resistance gets to him!" Snoke's voice was dripping with malice, "General, is this base, Starkiller, operational yet!?"

General Hux's eyes flashed up again, "Y-yes, yes sir. The base is ready to launch its first attack, as soon as we have a target." He said, with an unasked question behind his words.

A cruel smile began to play across Snoke's face. "Good. Prepare for the bases first attack, and make the target the Republic's seat of power, the Hosnian system. When Skywalker comes back, there will be no Republic to save, and the First Order will be the strongest power in the galaxy!"

General Hux smiled and rose, "I'll begin preparations immediately, sir." He said before walking out of the communications chamber.

The Supreme Leader then turned his attention to his student, Kylo Ren. "There has been an awakening Ren. You have felt it. The fugitives will have to stop before reaching the Resistance, and our spies across the galaxy will report when the droid is found. I want you to go and get the droid when that happens."

Kylo looked up at his master's hologram, which stared down at him expectantly. "Of course, my lord. You will have the map to Skywalker," Kylo said reverently, sensing that the Supreme Leader had left something unsaid.

As if on cue, the Supreme Leader spoke once more, "There is something you must know, my pupil. The fugitives escaped with the help of the smuggler Han Solo, your father. You will have to confront him."

Kylo Ren said nothing for several moments, before swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat, "Of course, master. I understand. I will not be seduced." He promised, before being dismissed by the Supreme Leader, and taking his leave of the communications chamber.

* * *

Rey stared questioningly at Finn. They were inside Maz Kanata's inn, and Finn had just gone off about how there was no resisting the First Order, that they were merciless and cruel, and the only solution was to get as far away from them as possible. She was pondering how the Resistance fighter could say something that made his organization seem so, well, so pointless, as if they could never succeed. _Why does Finn fight for them if he doesn't believe in the Resistance?_ Rey thought to herself, absolutely puzzled.

She was pulled out of her thoughts though, when she noticed Maz Kanata, the 1000 year old small alien who they were trying to get help from, climb up on the table and start staring intently at Finn. "After you've been alive for so long, you start to see the same eyes in different people," Maz mused, her meaning quite unclear to those looking on. "Your eyes, you have the eyes of someone who is afraid, and who is going to run." She said sagely.

The young man glared at Maz, "You. Don't know a thing about me. You don't know _what_ I've seen. You don't know how evil the First Order is. They'll slaughter everyone who doesn't agree with their ways!" he declared angrily.

Maz slowly sat back down, and sighed. "Those two over there," she said, pointing at two aliens sitting across the room. "They can get you to the Outer Rim, if you truly wish to run."

The Resistance fighter nodded at Maz, stood up, and turned to walk away, offering the loaned blaster to Han before he crossed the room. "Nah kid, you keep it. You'll need it," the smuggler said knowingly, and Finn nodded once more before walking towards the two spacers Maz had pointed out.

"Wait, what, no!" Rey finally said, realizing that Finn truly meant to leave. _This just doesn't make any sense!_ She thought wildly as she walked over to where he was talking to the spacers. "Finn, wait, you can't leave!" Rey exclaimed, interrupting their conversation.

Finn looked over at the aliens, "Don't leave without me." He told them before getting up and pulling Rey aside. "Rey, come with me. I'm heading to the Outer Rim, we can avoid the First Order there." He pleaded.

"But what about BB-8, and the map, and Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Master?!" she exclaimed, "What about your mission? Why are you running away from the Resistance?" She questioned.

"Look, I'm not Resistance, OK, I never was. I lied to you. I'm-, I'm a Stormtrooper. My name is FN-2187, and like all other Stormtroopers, I was taken as an infant from a family that I'll never know, and raised to do only one thing. But I've got nothing to fight for," he admitted to Rey. "But when I saw you for the first time on Jakku. You looked at me like no one ever had. Please, Rey, come with. The First Order will slaughter everyone." Finn pleaded with her.

Rey bit her lip, and looked down. He had lied to her, but it had made sense to do so. She never would've trusted him otherwise. But she was unsure if he could do what he asked of her. Leave their mission unfinished? Their promise to BB-8 unfulfilled? And never go back to Jakku?! _No!_ Rey thought to herself. She had to see this through, and get back to Jakku and wait for her family to come back for her. She looked back up at Finn, and squared her jaw. "Take care of yourself, Finn. Goodbye." She said to him solemnly.

Looking sadly at her, Finn nodded, and picked up his loaned blaster and headed out of the building.

* * *

Kylo Ren sat on his bed in his private quarters, with his head in his hands. The Star Destroyer he was aboard, Finalizer, was headed for the planet of Takodana, where First Order spies had reported seeing the BB unit they were pursuing in the company of the infamous smuggler, and two others who fit the descriptions of their fugitives. The Stormtrooper, and the local _girl_. Meanwhile, General Hux was aboard Starkiller base, and mere hours away from destroying the Republic's seat of power. All of the Supreme Leader's plans were in motion.

Before him was his Grandfather's mask that had survived the great Sith lord's funeral pyre on Endor so many years ago. "Forgive me," Kylo said out loud, speaking to the mask. "I feel it again… The call from the Light. Supreme Leader senses it." He confessed, recalling how the Supreme Leader had told him of how he would have to confront Han Solo, doubting his student had the power to do what needed to be done. "Show me again, the power of the darkness, and I'll let nothing stand in our way. Show me, Grandfather, and I will finish what you started." He promised solemnly, before getting up and heading to his ship to prepare for the attack.

* * *

Rey's head bolted up, as she tried to comprehend what she thought she had just heard. _That couldn't have been-_ , but her thoughts were cut off by the same sound. It definitely was what she had thought, the sound of an anguished child crying out for something. She walked around Maz's, not hearing any of the ruckus that normally accompanies such a busy establishment, hearing only that the cry was getting louder. She stood on the landing of a stairway that went down further into the building, below ground she assumed. She cautiously made her way down the stairs.

 _Clunk-clunk-clunk._ She knew BB-8 was following her down there, but she wasn't sure if the droid could also hear the sound of the child's cry, which kept getting louder. Rey walked down a long hallway and entered a side room. The crying was unbearably loud in this room, but she saw no child. There was a chest on the ground that called out to her, and when she knelt down next to it and opened the lid, the crying stopped completely. It was not silent though. The absence of all sound made an oppressive sound itself that drove her to touch the metal object within the chest, that seemed to be calling out to her.

Instantly, Rey's mind was flooded with images and sounds she could barely comprehend. A metal hand, and a droid. A dark man in a mask. Herself, years prior, screaming 'Come back!' at a ship that was abandoning her. Several hooded men, standing around many dead men. And a voice, a man. "Rey…," the voice said, sounding so far away. "COME BACK!" Her own voice screamed again, and Rey felt her back collide with the wall.

She stared around wildly, she was sweating profusely, and already the vision she saw was becoming fuzzy in her mind. Rey didn't know where the alien had come from, but Maz was there, staring at her intently. "What was that!?" Rey half-screamed at Maz.

"I don't know. But I know that the saber," Maz said, pointing at the metal shaft she had touched, "It calls to you. That saber belonged to Luke Skywalker, and to his father before him, and now it wants you to wield it. Go on child, take it." Maz implored.

Rey quickly looked from Maz, to the lightsaber, back to Maz, who sighed and attempted to calm the girl. "I have been around for centuries, and factions rise and fall, but the force has always been there. It flows through you, child. You know that whoever you are waiting for on Jakku is never going to come back. Search your feelings and you will know it to be true. Feel the force move around you, and embrace you, close your eyes and let it calm you. Feel the force, and know, child, that you were meant to have that lightsaber." Maz said reassuringly.

"I am never touching that thing again!" Rey screamed, still terrified of what she had seen in her vision, and she pushed past Maz and ran back up the stairs, out of the inn. She had to get out, she had to leave. She had to get back to Jakku, she couldn't do this. What had she been thinking?! That she could be of any use to the Resistance? Nothing good ever came of getting caught up in the problems of others.

These thoughts continued to race through her head as ran through the thick foliage that had amazed her only hours before. She soon tired and leaned against a tree, and it was then that she noticed that the droid BB-8 had followed her out of Maz Kanata's inn, and out into the forest. "What are you doing? You have to go back. Han will get you to the Resistance! Go, I can't help you anymore!" She argued with the droid who didn't seem to want to leave her alone.

Just then she heard ships passing overhead, and looked up to see several TIE fighters zooming past, with more ships likely carrying Stormtroopers flying in the direction she had just come from. Looking past them, however, she saw something even more disconcerting, five red streaks of light were visible in the sky, all seemingly crashing into something. She couldn't focus on them for too long though, just then something caught her eye, and within her line of sight was a Stormtrooper.

Rey quickly pulled her borrowed blaster out of her sash and fired it in the direction of the Stormtrooper, only to have it click uselessly. The safety had been on, and she had been fumbling with the blaster trying to turn it off, when the Stormtrooper noticed her and started shooting at her. She managed to dodge his fire, and get the safety off at the same time, and fired two shots at him taking the soldier out, before turning on her heel, and running even farther away from the direction of Maz's.

After several minutes of frantic running, something made Rey stop, and she had a creeping feeling she was being hunted. She stopped and ordered BB-8 to go on without her, so she could cover him, reassuring the droid that she could handle the Stormtroopers.

She slowly moved in the direction she had come from, feeling the sensation she had felt earlier grow stronger. She maneuvered into some old ruins for cover, and waited several seconds trying to focus in on that feeling. She closed her eyes, trying to feel it out. _North and…. West? Something's out there, getting closer._ She thought to herself, not knowing how she could feel it.

Her eyes suddenly snapped open again when she heard it. An electrical whir, and then a crackling in the background. She looked around wildly, losing focus on the feeling she had felt earlier, and unable to pinpoint where her pursuer was. She could her own heartbeat, going wild from the fear and adrenaline. Suddenly, from behind a stacked stone pillar, _he_ stepped out. A dark robed man, hooded, with a mask under the hood.

Rey began to walk backwards away from him, shooting her blaster at him, but none of her shots made contact for some reason. She stumbled a few times, and as he got closer, she realized that the blaster wasn't going to stop him, and she climbed up out of the ruins in a quick maneuver, desperate to get away from him. He jumped up there scaring her, and after shooting at him once more, she felt her blaster knocked out of her hand, and her arm forced behind her.

Rey couldn't move, she could feel her blood rushing through her veins, her skin pulsing where the veins were close to her skin. The hooded man came to stand in front of her, tall and menacing, his lightsaber still humming and crackling in his hands.

"So," the hooded figure said, his voice deep and slightly robotic under the mask. "You are the girl I've heard so much about." He commented, not sounding very impressed to Rey, despite his words. He had moved out of her vision, but she could sense that he was behind her, circling her now.

Rey didn't answer, she didn't know if she could. Just as she was beginning to wonder if he was still behind her, she felt something very, very hot come within an inch of her neck, and she knew his saber was there. "Tell me where the droid is." The hooded figure commanded of her.

"I don't know about any droid." Rey lied to him.

"Don't you?" he questioned, disbelief evident in his voice. Very suddenly, Rey felt a force up against her mind, sifting through her memories. It stopped suddenly over one. "You've seen the map." He whispered, seemingly more to himself than anything. Rey felt the pressure in her mind start to increase, but before it could do what it needed to do, a voice called out to them.

"Lord Ren, the Resistance is attacking from the shore." An approaching Stormtrooper informed the hooded figure. "We haven't located the droid yet." The soldier added.

Rey suddenly felt all of the pressure up against her mind fall away, and heard the crackling saber being sheathed as the heat disappeared from her neck. "There is no need for the droid," the hooded figure said, "We have everything we need." Suddenly, Rey felt her body completely weaken and her knees give in, but before she could slump to the ground, she was scooped up into someone's arms. "Let's go." The hooded figure's voice said, and she realized he was carrying her somewhere, as she felt the vibrations of his voice coming from beneath the plated chest piece that she was being held against. Rey's will slowly diminished, and with it she couldn't keep the effect of the hooded man's power at bay, so she slowly slipped into unconsciousness, completely unaware of where she was going, or where the droid she promised to keep safe was.

* * *

 **A/N: Boom, second chapter, crushing it. But also, Holy feedback batman! 10 reviews, 37 favs, and 95 follows from over 1000 visitors, in like a day! I'm absolutely blown away. This chapter pretty much wraps up everything that is staying the same from the movie, next chapter will mark the beginning of where my story deviates.**

 **In chapter one, I kind of wish I had gone a little more in depth with Rey's point of view, in her scene with Han and Co. escaping the freighter. However, all of us did just see this scene in the movie recently, and she doesn't know about Kylo Ren's existence yet, so I decided to rush through it, since like none of it will be relevant later. Also I'm just unreasonably excited to get past all of this setup and into my story.**

 **Anyways, thank you all so much for your feedback, I'm absolutely flabbergasted, but I also get it, this ship is literally screaming to be written. I started thinking about this ship and story ideas after seeing it for the 1** **st** **time Thursday night/Friday morning, and I started writing this after getting home from seeing it a 2** **nd** **time Saturday night. I'm seeing it again on Tuesday with my Dad, and I'm going to try and really focus in on Rey and Kylo during their scenes, so I don't screw up their personalities too much!**

 **Also, I'm not going to write this story as Rey and Kylo being cousins, I'll tell you all that much upfront. Luke's lover, Mara Jade from the expanded universe was decanonized, so its not likely that Rey is his daughter, and I also think her being Luke's daughter is too obvious, since most people probably left the theater thinking that, and I don't think they'd write it to be so predictable. Fun fact, it's been decanonized but Mara Jade and Luke had a son named Ben in the Expanded Universe, which is Han and Leia's son's name in the new canon. Who is Rey then? VII left her backstory pretty wide open to speculation. I'm about 90% certain what I'm going to do for her backstory, but you'll just have to wait until the story gets there to find out what I do with it :p**


	3. Interrogation Aboard the Finalizer

Chapter 3: Interrogation Aboard the Finalizer

Kylo Ren quickly strided down the shuttle ramp as it descended to meet the ground of the docking bay. The shuttle trip from Takodana back to the Finalizer had been brief, or at least brief enough that the scavenger in his arms had not become a burden to carry. Not that the girl was especially fatiguing to carry. Quite the opposite in fact, Kylo had mused. He had more than enough time to observe her during the shuttle ride. The girl barely weighed anything at all, but he could clearly see that her lean frame was all muscle. She had obviously been living the physically taxing life of a scavenger for a long time. In her unconsciousness, her breathing was slow and shallow, and her face was relaxed. The expression of fear, panic, and anger he had seen on her face when she was attempting to flee him had disappeared, and left behind was the face of a girl who looked to be sleeping serenely. Escaped tendrils of dark brown hair that had been previously stuck to her face from perspiration had dried, and were now slightly curled and framing her face.

As Kylo Ren walked across the docking bay to his destination, he was intercepted by General Hux who was staring questioningly at the bundle of tan cloth in his arms. "My troops have informed me that you forewent the pursuit of the droid because you found something else with the same information," Hux stated icily. "Do you honestly believe this… girl knows where Skywalker is, and how to get to him?" He asked, his voice and face expressing his lack of faith in Ren's decision.

"She has seen the map," Kylo stated annoyed, knowing that Hux was hoping for his failure, so as to gain favor with the Supreme Leader. "It is simply a matter of getting her into an interrogation room and having her show it to me."

The General's lips thinned with displeasure. "She's one of the Resistance. She'll fight you're attempts." Hux bit back at Ren icily.

"And she will lose that fight. She is no one. She will break, and then she will die when we have no use for her. We will know where Skywalker is, and the Resistance will be none the wiser that we know." Kylo Ren replied, his deep, robotic voice getting increasingly more angry than annoyed as the conversation continued. Without waiting for a response from the general, he stalked past him, eager to get the girl out of his arms and into an interrogation room.

Why he had even decided to carry her the entire time was beyond him. He could have just pawned her off on a Stormtrooper with commands to take her to the prison block. But he hadn't. Instead he had opted to personally hold onto her for the entire shuttle ride, and to continue to carry her across the Finalizer to the interrogation room.

 _Well, it is just as well_ , Kylo Ren justified in his head, considering there was now precedence for Stormtroopers going rogue and freeing prisoners. _Yes, she is too important, it is too great a risk to leave her in someone else's hands until I have that map_.

As he went about convincing himself of this, he arrived at the prison block's interrogation room. After informing the guard stationed there to stand outside the room and keep the door locked until he was finished, he walked inside the room. The room was very bare, apart from the restraining chair in the middle of the room, the only other furniture was a low table with an imaginative variety of torture implements. Not that he would need any. The power of the Force gave him everything he needed to get information.

He lowered the scavenger into the restraining chair, carefully setting her head down, and went about putting the restraints around her. His face was much closer to her now than it had been when he had been carrying her, and he noticed things he hadn't before. _Dirt?_ He questioned himself. _No, it's sand._ Her scent. _Sand, sweet clear air, and… sunlight?_ Kylo shook his head at his absurdity and forced himself to stop thinking about how the damn girl smelled. _Sunlight is not a scent._ He chided himself, inexplicably angry as he bolted her restraints around her wrists and ankles, a little bit tighter than was absolutely necessary.

Upon completing his task, he stepped back to admire his handiwork for a moment, before sitting down on the small table. He released his power's hold on her consciousness. It could take moments, or it could take up to an hour, for her body to realize that it was no longer being forced asleep. So he waited.

* * *

The first thing Rey noticed when she started to wake was how uncomfortable her neck was. She made to get up and stretch, but was met with resistance when she tried to do so. Opening her eyes, only bright light flooded her vision. Becoming frightened she tried to bend up again, or move anything, but she couldn't. She was flat on her back, but as her eyes adjusted to the brightness, she realized she wasn't lying down, but almost standing up. Metal bars were cutting into her wrists and ankles and she couldn't move anything. Rey's breathing picked up considerably as she realized that wherever she was, she was absolutely not going anywhere. She closed her eyes, and tried not to let panic and desperation flood her mind. She quickly failed at that, and reopened her eyes to try and look around the room, but just ended up flailing against her restraints more.

Hurting her wrists against the restraints, she looked down at the ones around her ankles, trying to think of a plan, or anything at all. _The lightsaber, and the vision. I saw myself screaming. Then what?_ Rey wondered to herself trying to piece together how she got here. Closing her eyes, she looked deeper. _I—I ran. There were ships. The First Order! BB-8 needed to be protected, but then -._ Rey's eyes flashed open as she recalled the masked man who had hunted her. She remembered his voice, deep, but robotic, and how the heat of his lightsaber had been so close to her neck. Then, she had been in his arms, being carried somewhere, falling unconscious for a reason she couldn't know. Suddenly more terrified than she had been, she started trying her restraints again, hoping their integrity had somehow been compromised since the last time she had tested them, roughly 30 seconds ago.

"You're awake." Rey froze at the voice, and, terrified, realized that it was the same voice as the masked man. She looked up and over to where the voice had come from, in front of her. He was sitting down, hands together, with his arms on his legs. She couldn't see his eyes because of his mask, but Rey felt distinctly like an animal that was being studied.

"What happened to the rest of the resistance?!" Rey questioned, her voice slightly shrill from her fear, but her anger broke its way through as well.

The masked man stayed quiet for a moment, before responding. "You mean the traitors, murderers, and thieves you call your friends? You'll be relieved to hear I have no idea." He shrugged. "You want to kill me, don't you?" The man asked, as if he had just realized it.

"That happens when you're being hunted by a _creature_ in a mask." Rey said haughtily, refusing to show him how scared she was of what awaited her.

Another several moments passed, before the man stood up, causing Rey to flinch slightly. But all he did was reach for his head to do… something. To take off his mask, Rey realized. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and prepared herself to see whatever atrocity the man chose to hide with a mask. He pressed the release and began to lift it off. _A helmet, not a mask?_ Rey realized, before quickly having the thought pushed from her head by the shock of what she saw. A young man, who must be only a few years older than she was. He had long black hair, and pale, but young, smooth skin. He had a distinguishing nose, and a prominent mouth. _Why wear a mask?_ She wondered idly, forgetting her circumstances for a moment, she thought him rather handsome for a moment. Just one moment, before she remembered that she was probably about to die, and looked down hurriedly so he couldn't realize what she had been thinking.

When she finally managed to look back up at him again, Rey noticed that his eyes, a dark brown or black, seemed to express some conflict in him. _Indecision, maybe?_ Rey wondered, trying to think of a way to get out of this. "Who are you?" she asked after trying to discern the expression in his eyes.

Whatever expression he had been wearing, turned to a mirthful smirk at her question. "You do ask a lot of questions, don't you, considering that I am the one who is to interrogate you." He responded. "My name is Kylo Ren." He stated simply, a cruel glint appearing in his eye. "And you are no one. A scavenger from a garbage bin of a planet." He said, seemingly amused.

Rey, insulted but not wanting to antagonize him in hopes she still had a chance to get out of here, tried to think of a way to not get tortured. "It's Rey," she said quietly. Kylo Ren's expression changed from amused to confused, and he raised a questioning eyebrow at her. "My name," she clarified, "It's Rey. And I'm not from Jakku. I was just there waiting for my family to come back." She clarified, not sure how him knowing this would help, but hoping the more he knew the harder it would be to hurt her.

His face became critical of this information, and she could feel herself blush as he raked his eyes over her body. "Well, _Rey_ ," he emphasized her name, "It's clear you've been scavenging on that hell hole for a very long time." He said, the implication of his words clear to Rey.

She flinched slightly at his words, insulted again. "What do you want from me?" she gritted out, her voice showing more of her anger than she preferred.

"The map to Luke Skywalker," he stated. "The droid had it, and you've seen it. Somehow, you, of all people, convinced the droid to show it to you." He wondered aloud, narrowing his eyes at her.

"I won't give you that. Ever." She bit back, knowing she couldn't do that to the Resistance. She had grown up to legends about Luke Skywalker, she didn't want to have a hand in his downfall.

Kylo Ren took a step closer to her, "You know I can take whatever I want," he said almost sorrowfully, and took another step so he was only half a foot away from her. Then she felt it, the pressure against her mind, as he searched through it, trying to get to the map. She didn't know how to, but she tried to resist anyways, with little effect. "You don't have to be afraid," he reassured her. "I feel it too, you know, the fear. And…, the loneliness. You've been so alone, waiting, the countless nights you've spent desperate for sleep, and for someone, anyone. I see the island, alone, surrounded by an endless, empty ocean... and you see Han Solo as the father you never had. He would have disappointed you in that, you know."

Rey was gasping for breath, due to her attempt to resist him, but also at the feeling of her own crippling loneliness that he had brought to the surface of her mind. She could feel the desperation she had learned to control and suppress over the years, it all came over her at once. "NO!" She managed through her exertion, and she pushed back against him hard. A look of confused shock went across his face for a moment, before becoming infuriated. She could feel him begin to push much harder on her mind, and her head started to feel like it was going to split open, but she pushed hard enough that it felt like she slammed her mind against his, and after a few more moments of resistance, she felt her push slip through. Suddenly her mind was bombarded with emotions and visions that she had never seen. His, she realized, and she tried to comprehend what she was experiencing as she began to feel all the things he must've felt. "You—you're the one who is afraid." She managed, gasping for breath as she spoke, "You're a-afraid that—that you'll never be as strong as… as _Darth Vader_!" She finished, and suddenly felt all of the pressure on her mind release as he seemed to have been thrown away from her. Crashing against the table behind him, he looked at her wildly, expression switching between anger, amazement, and, finally, fearful shock. Without saying anything, he practically ran past her and out of the room.

Rey, still gasping for breath, couldn't comprehend what had just happened. She had forced him out of her mind, but how? He was a Sith, if he had used the Force to invade her mind, did that mean that was how she had invaded his mind? She didn't even know what the Force was, just that it's always in the stories about the mythical Jedi. That was the least of her problems though, as she tried to figure out what had happened, and how she was going to stay alive, she found it too difficult to keep her eyes open. Whatever she had done, it had drained everything from her, and she wasn't going to be able to resist the pull of sleep. _I need to get out of here, but…_ and for the 2nd time in as many days, Rey found herself falling unconscious in an inopportune situation.

* * *

Kylo Ren paced across his quarters, panicking and trying to think about what had happened in the interrogation room. He couldn't get the map from the girl. She had forced him out of her mind. She was force-sensitive. No training, but powerful enough to push out someone as trained as him. He needed that map, and he needed to go to Snoke to figure out how to get to it. He grimaced at the thought, his master would not be pleased that an untrained whelp had resisted him, and would think him weak.

Every second that passed that they did not have the map could be the moment that the damnable droid showed the Resistance the missing piece of the map. Kylo stopped his pacing suddenly. They knew the droid to only have one piece of the map, but they did not know if the Resistance had the rest of the map. _How could they?_ He thought to himself. He had to research archive from the old empire for months to put the current, incomplete map together. No, the resistance would likely not be able to find Luke Skywalker immediately after getting their droid back, which bought them some time. Still, the Supreme Leader needed to be informed immediately. Yet, Kylo Ren continued his pacing.

When she first tried to resist his invasion of her mind, he had noticed it. The light that had begun to emanate from her. He couldn't fathom what it could be at the time, but when she had managed to push him out, he had been blinded by it, but couldn't see it when he looked at her after. It had been her power, he realized now, he could see it because he had been connected to her. But it had started as nothing before growing. This was the first the girl had seen or used of her power. She wouldn't know what it is, she could be scared of it. They could use the girls fear to manipulate her.

But perhaps not. The things he had seen when he had invaded her mind. She was fiercely capable and independent, at least when she was not facing the likes of him. She sought belonging, but he had seen her push away the droid when it first sought her help, he had seen her push away his father, despite her admiration for him, she pushed him away when he offered her belonging in a position on his ship. He saw her push away the Stormtrooper, FN-2187, when he was pouring out his heart to her, wanting her to come with him to make a life in the Outer Rim. She wanted to belong, but she was scared to as well. Scared of losing that belonging, perhaps. He had seen her being abandoned, felt what she felt, saw the ship flying away, and he had heard her screams as if he had been there. She wanted to belong, but didn't want to feel the hurt of being abandoned again.

Kylo Ren realized that he wasn't just analyzing how to manipulate her, but also sympathizing with this girl, and became infuriated with himself for his weakness. He wielded his lightsaber and started taking out all of his frustrations on the wall. He didn't have the map, the girl resisted him, and he felt sorry for her.

Kylo Ren finally emerged from his quarters after 3 hours of scarring the wall with his lightsaber, and considering how he would explain himself to the Supreme Leader. He made his way to the communications chamber, and once there, he called upon the Supreme Leader.

"My apprentice," Snoke said upon appearing before him, "I trust you have succeeded in your mission to Takodana."

Kylo Ren stiffened, not knowing what to expect from Snoke when he learned of his failure. "Not quite, Supreme Leader. We couldn't obtain the droid before the Resistance got to the planet, but I had tracked down the scavenger who had helped the droid escape Jakku. I pressed her mind to find the droid, and found more, that she had somehow gotten the droid to show her the map, and when we ran out of time, I brought her back to get the map from her in the interrogation room." He stated, pausing before he got to his failure. "Unfortunately, the girl… managed to push me out of her mind, and managed to push back into mine." He admitted, ashamed of his weakness against the girl.

"What?" the Supreme Leader asked, menacingly quiet, "She. RESISTED. YOU!" He yelled, his voice echoing off of the walls.

"She is strong with the force!" Kylo explained. "Untrained, but stronger than she knows. The Resistance doesn't have the rest of the map, they can't get to Skywalker without it, but I _can_ get this part of the map from her! She has no real attachment to the Resistance. I just need time, and your guidance, and I can weed out her Resistance sympathies, get her to trust me, and turn her to the Dark side." He implored Snoke, a small part of him just wanting to keep the girl who had been so alone, and who had managed to push him out, alive for his own curiosity.

Supreme Leader Snoke stared down at Kylo for a long time before answering. "Fine. Go to this girl, and use a different tactic on her. Make her embrace her emotions, teach her how to harness her anger. That alone will begin to bring her to the Dark side, and she will either give herself completely to want to give us the map, or her embracing of the Dark Side will make her less able to resist you when you invade her mind. Go now, and in the meantime I will have General Hux begin to work on bringing systems that were loyal to the Republic before the destruction of the Hosnian system over to us."

Kylo Ren relaxed, "Yes, master," he said with reverence, "I will not fail you." He promised before turning on his heel and leaving the communications chamber.

Outside, he began to make his way back to the prison block, this time to reassure her that she would not be killed yet, despite her uselessness, and then move her to a cell where she wasn't strapped to a chair. _Small steps_ , he thought to himself, as he considered his plan of attack.

* * *

Rey woke up some time later, but going by how exhausted she still felt, she assumed it had not been very long. 2 hours, maybe more, she guessed. She immediately went back to testing her restraints, but unfortunately they were still very good at their job. However, at that time, she heard radio static from behind her, where the door was. She realized that it must be the Stormtrooper assigned to guard her, and she started thinking of idea, anything, to get past him. Rey's first idea was to figure out how to use the power she had used against Kylo Ren against the Stormtrooper.

Rey remembered a story she had heard of the legendary Luke Skywalker when she had been on Jakku. That he had once infiltrated a Hutt's headquarters simply by telling the door guards to let him in. Jedi could convince people to do things with the Force, without them questioning what they had been 'convinced' to do.

Desperate for any chance at freedom, she decided to give it a shot. "You will undo these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open." She attempted to command the Stormtrooper.

At first, all she got back was silence, making her question whether or not someone was really there. "What was that?" the Stormtrooper questioned menacingly, daring her to speak again.

She took a deep breath, before making a second attempt. "You will undo these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open." She tried again. She heard the Stormtrooper start moving around her, and at first she thought she had succeeded, until he came into her field of vision.

"I'll tighten those restraints, and have you beaten if you say another word." He threatened, jabbing his weapon painfully into her ribcage.

Despite the threat, Rey felt more capable in her ability to make him to what she said when she made eye contact with him, so she tried again anyways. She closed her eyes, slower her breathing and calmed herself, trying to pinpoint this power within her. She opened her eyes, "You will undo these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open." She said stoically. The Stormtrooper immediately straightened.

"I will undo these restraints and leave this cell with the door open." He said agreeably while undoing her restraints, and making to walk out the door.

"And you'll drop your gun." Rey said hurriedly, amazed that this had actually worked.

"And I'll drop my gun." The Stormtrooper complied, dropping his gun right before the exit.

Rey waited a minute for the Stormtrooper to walk away, before bolting out of the interrogation chair, and going to inspect the dropped gun. It was a blaster assault rifle, but she figured she could be capable enough with it. _You pull the trigger_ , she thought to herself, remembering when Han had given her the blaster. With that memory she quickly checked to make sure the safety was off. Reassured that her weapon would actually work, she decided on a rough plan to find a ship, and excitedly ran out into the hallway.

And was immediately grabbed and pushed against a pillar in the hallway. "Going somewhere, were you Rey?" The deep voice of her captor asked her, a hint of laughter in his voice.

After the breath that was knocked out of her by being unexpectedly thrown into a pillar came back to her, she assessed her current situation to see if she could get out of his grip. It appeared that the answer was probably not, as he was not actually holding her against the pillar, but was a few feet back from her, holding her there with the Force. "Not really, I was just going to go find something to eat, and then go back and strap myself into my comfortable interrogation chair." Rey bit back, bitter that her escape had been cut so short, she had barely gotten out of the room, she had been so hopeful, so sure that she was going to get free. He could have at least pretended that she had a chance.

Kylo Ren smirked amusedly at her sarcasm, and disappointment. "Yes, I suppose you do need to eat, though you don't look like you do it often. The mind-trick was clever, you know. I wouldn't have thought you capable of controlling your power so well, so quickly," he said, complimenting her attempted escape plan. "It is lucky that I happened to be coming to collect to you when you convinced the guard to abandon his weapon and post. What would have been you're next step? Avoid Stormtroopers, and find a ship you could pilot and steal it? Of course, your escape would not have gone unnoticed long enough for you to find a ship, so you'd had to have found a ship while the entire ship was on lockdown, and every person on it was looking for you."

Rey sighed, irritated at his smugness. "Yeah, that was pretty much the plan." She spat back acidly, the desired effect quite diminished when she was pinned to the wall, unable to move most of her muscles. "Wait, coming to collect me for what? What are you going to do with me?" She asked, afraid of his response.

"I'm going to let you down. Don't try and run, you won't get far," he warned her, and he released his power's hold on her, and she unceremoniously fell to the ground. He offered his hand to her to help her up, but she ignored it and stood up on her own, still waiting for an answer to her question. "You won't give me the map, and I can't make you, since you can force me out. My first instinct was to kill you due to your uselessness. But you're strong. Stronger than you know, and I can make you stronger than you'll ever imagine. I can train you in the ways of the Force." He informed her.

Her eyes widened at the insinuation, "No!" She exclaimed, "You're the Dark side, I won't join you! You can't make me!" She argued, angry and afraid at the same time. She wouldn't do this, she could not do the things the First Order did.

"Of course, Rey," He said softly, her name sounding strange coming from his deep voice. "Of course you have a choice." His voice was almost a whisper now. With one fluid motion he had his lightsaber activated and at her neck, the heat making her begin to perspire. "Choose, Rey." He commanded, his face hard, but his eyes shining with remorse. _He doesn't want to kill me._ She realized. But he would. If she made him, he would kill her. But she couldn't do this, could she? The Dark side embodied greed and selfishness, all of the things she was against. But agreeing to let him train her doesn't mean she would have to embrace the Dark side? Would it? She didn't really know how the Light and Dark side worked, but she wanted to stay alive.

"Yes." She finally managed to say, the heat from Kylo's lightsaber beyond uncomfortable. "I'll train with you." She finished, deciding to stay alive and escape at the first sure chance she had later.

Kylo Ren shut off his light saber, and seemed to be relieved. "Smart choice," he told her. "It would have been a shame to see you waste all your potential and sacrifice yourself for the Resistance, and organization you weren't even a part of," he clarified. "Follow me," he commanded before turning on his heel and beginning to walk down the hallway.

Rey, deciding not to disobey her first order, caught up to him, and walked with him in silence, until they reached a set of two doors, about 20 feet away from each other. "That door leads to your new… quarters." He said regarding the door on the left, opting for a nicer word than 'cell'. "Again, do not try and escape. If you do, I'll be forced to hurt you as punishment." He said pointedly, "Regardless, I'll tell you the measures that will prevent your escape. The vents are not big enough for even you to fit through. I will use my abilities to keep your door locked. If it ever unlocks, I will feel it. There will also be two Stormtroopers stationed outside of your door, and 10 more along this corridor. Also, this door," he motioned to the door 20 feet to the right, "leads to my quarters. I will feel it if you get too far from me when I don't expect you to. Do you understand?" He asked.

Rey, feeling quite dismayed about her escape prospects, simply looked up at him and nodded. "Good," he said. He opened the door for her quarters, and motioned her inside. "I will have a droid sent with something for you to eat. Otherwise rest, as your training will being tomorrow."

Rey nodded again, and walked inside. He stared at her for a few moments, as if was about to say something, but then just backed up and closed the door. Rey could hear the locks click into place. Turning away from the door, Rey looked around her new surroundings. Nothing about the room looked comfortable. There was a small metal table with a metal chair in the main room, otherwise it was empty. An archway in the back of the small room led to another very similar room, but instead of a table and chair, but there was a bed. A fairly lavish bed too, to Rey's eyes at least. She had been living out of and AT-AT on Jakku for several years, which didn't have a whole lot of room to move around, and no comfortable space to sleep. Here she had a bedframe and mattress. There was a door in the bedroom that led to a small bathroom, where there was a sink, toilet, and shower. All 3 she had never had access to on Jakku, but had occasionally salvaged for pipes from the old ships she scoured.

All in all, she had more here than could've ever hoped to have on Jakku, but she still felt like she needed to be back there, though she knew deep down no one was ever going to come back for her. Rey, still exhausted from her mental fight with Kylo Ren earlier, chose to return to the bedroom and let sleep overcome her, knowing she would need it to deal with _him_ tomorrow.

* * *

Kylo set his light saber on its perch in his quarters and sighed to himself. He had managed to get the girl to agree to let him train her. _Forced her, you mean._ He thought to himself. He made her choose between life and death, of course she chose to train with him. He had to act quickly, convince her, really convince her, that she was better off here, then escaping. He knew that despite his warnings, she would try, though she would wait until she had a greater than average chance of escaping to risk his wrath.

Sighing, he pulled off his outer robe and shirt, and placed them next to his helmet and lightsaber, before sitting on his bed to begin to meditate. He would attempt to sleep later. He had to try and sort the feelings he had regarding the girl being still alive, still here, and now under his tutelage.

He looked down at the skull of his grandfather briefly, reminding himself of what he was attempting to accomplish, and began to meditate.

* * *

 **A/N: Oh dear, and I thought the amount of feedback from one chapter was a lot! You are all amazing. I apologize for the first two chapters, and some of this chapter too I guess, being a recap of the movie, but in their defense, they are small chapters, and I wanted to spend some time getting familiar inside their heads. Anyways, I'm on break from university until the 13** **th** **, so I have plenty of time to get fairly deep into this story before updates start becoming a weekly, or even bi-weekly thing. I'm going to try and continue to write a chapter's worth of content every two or three days until then!**

 **Clearing some possibly confusing story aspects up. Kylo assumes that the Resistance doesn't have the map because he doesn't know that Luke gave it R2-D2. I'm also assuming that the First Order doesn't know where D'Qar, the location of the Resistance HQ is, because how could they? I think they had a ship track the Falcon there in the movie, but I don't remember exactly, so I'm just going to say they failed to track the Falcon back to D'Qar. Also Rey was taken to the Star Destroyer instead of Starkiller base for her interrogation.**

 **Also, TFA is just as good the 3** **rd** **time. I want to see it again already! I'm just sad that I can't experience the movie for the '1** **st** **time' again! Thanks again for all of your support! :D**


	4. A Risky Idea

Chapter 4: An Idea

 _She was in her makeshift home on Jakku, screaming and sobbing, as she gripped the yarn doll of a Rebel fighter desperately to her chest. Sleep evaded her, as the ever-present loneliness pressed in on her in the dark. No one. Nothing. Going nowhere. Abandoned. Unloved. Insignificant._

 _Her AT-AT home, along with her cries, faded away, and suddenly she was on her speeder bike, racing through a forest. 'Come with me.' His voice echoed. 'Straight into you, and you looked at me like no one ever had.'_

 _Her tears blinded her vision, she crashed into a tree, and was thrown to the side. He was there, masked and menacing. He walked towards her, touched her forehead, and all the light disappeared._

 _She was alone again, in complete darkness. An island, in an endless, lonely ocean, materialized, and she saw a masked figure surrounded by a pile of corpses. Some she recognized. Han, Maz, Chewbacca. The only friends she had ever let herself have. Finn was running at the masked figure who ran him through effortlessly. As the life drained from his eyes, the masked figure turned towards her. They removed their mask, and she screamed as her own face, marked with corruption, stared back at her._

Rey bolted up right as her scream died in her throat. Gasping for breath, she brought her legs to her chest and put her head in her hands. Shivering from the sweat covering her, she desperately tried to control her emotions, and to calm down. _You don't need anyone. Better to be lonely, to not let anyone in, than to be abandoned again, to be betrayed… or to betray someone._ She reassured herself, thinking of Finn running away from the mission, from the First Order, from her.

"You do not believe that, Rey," a deep, mechanical voice reached out to her through the semi-darkness. Rey whipped her head up, and narrowed her eyes in the half-light, to see _him_ leaning against the archway to her bedroom, expressionless with his mask. "You hate the loneliness, you're afraid of it. You want- need to belong to something, someone. The Dark side will give that to you. _I_ can give that to you." He declared, giving her an offer she so desperately wanted to accept.

Instead, she stopped her gasping, and squared her jaw. "Do you watch all of your prisoners sleep?" she spat bitterly at him, remembering how he had been watching her when she awoke in the interrogation room.

"Only you, though you are my apprentice, not my prisoner," he replied, amusement appearing in his voice. "Are you going to push me away as well, as you have done to everyone else kind enough to offer you solace?"

She scowled at him from the bed. "How long have you been there, watching me?" she demanded to know, ignoring his question, and feeling quite violated that he had observed her when she was asleep and vulnerable.

An amused chuckle reverberated from his mask. "Several hours. It is quite impossible for me to sleep, you know, when you dream so… violently, so fiercely. Any force-sensitive on this ship would have been able to feel how you thrashed about in your sleep. I decided to invite myself in, to see for myself what disturbed my apprentice's sleep so. And what melancholy dreams you do have, though I did especially enjoy the part with me in it. I'm flattered." He mocked her cruelly.

Rey blushed angrily at his teasing, and stared down at the bed. "It wasn't a dream," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "It was my all of my worst nightmares," she clarified. "Being alone forever has always been one of them. My first friend abandoning me was a nightmare come true. Now I'm afraid that I'll fall to corruption, to the Dark side, and betray those who I considered friends." She finished, blinking back tears as she stared into her mattress. She looked back up at him, "That's why you were in them." She spat back, making her face hard and cold again, refusing to be weak.

Kylo Ren stared in her direction for several moments, and she could feel the anger rolling off of him in waves. Suddenly though, it disappeared, replaced by something she couldn't identify. _Remorse, perhaps? Or pity?_ She thought to herself, trying to make him out. He took several steps towards her, and reached a hand out towards her face. When she tried to recoil from his touch, he froze her movements with the force. He slowly began to tuck the strands of hair that had escaped her characteristic knots behind her ears, until his view of her face was unobstructed. "The Dark side will not corrupt you, Rey," he said, softly, his mechanical voice barely a whisper, causing her to shiver in his hold. "If you murder your _friends_ , it will be because you chose to do so, Rey. The Dark side is just a tool, a more powerful way to utilize the Force. The only difference is that the Light denies all emotion. The Dark embraces them, utilizes them, which makes it stronger. And you could murder them with either." He insisted. "But our actions will always be our own. There is always a choice, Rey. You will see. You will have only yourself to blame, if you regret your choices, or if you regret what you become, Rey." His masked voice whispered into her ear.

He stood up, and released her from his force-hold. Hugging her chest to her knees, she stared sadly at the man who could so easily take away her freedom of movement. "And what about you? Do you regret what you've become?" she asked solemnly.

Several moments of silence passed, before he turned around, and began to leave. "Shower, and change into the clothes that will be left out for you. I'll collect you when you've finished to begin your training." He commanded stoically, and then left her quarters.

Sighing heavily to herself, she pulled herself out of her bed and went into her bathroom. After removing her hair from her knots, and undressing, she stared at the shower for several moments, trying to figure it out. She had never actually used one before. On Jakku, if she ever needed to be cleaned, she scrubbed a dry, dust soap into her skin or hair, which would clean it and could then be wiped off. She rarely ever used that either though, since it was expensive. A whole portion of food was what it cost to get enough soap to fully clean her skin and hair once. Another half portion of food was required to get enough of a similar substance to fully clean her clothes. Consequently she only ever did it once every four to six weeks, when she had a particularly good day of scavenging.

Getting cold in her nakedness, Rey began experimenting. She turned one of the two knobs, and water started pouring out in streams from a head about a foot above her on the wall. She watched in amazement for a full minute, as water just poured out of the wall, and went down a drain in the floor. She didn't know what she had been expecting, but she never would have thought that it would be something as precious as water she would be cleaning herself with. Testing the water with a hand, she found it absolutely freezing. Knitting her brows together in concentration, she turned off the knob, stopping the stream of water, and tried the other one. She noted that this water was unbearably hot, so she tried the first knob while the second was still running. To her happiness at having figured it out, the water became a warm temperature she could stand.

Entering the shower she stood in the water, and found two things she _was_ familiar with. A mesh of cloth used to rub something into her skin, and a solid form akin to the dry dust she was used to. She spent several minutes scrubbing every inch of her body free of a month's accumulated dirt, sand, and sweat, before working it into her hair. After completely cleaning herself, she shut off the water, and stepped out of the shower. She found a cloth towel on the sink that she used to quickly dry herself off, before trying to figure out how to get the water out her hair, for she had never had enough water in her hair to warrant drying it. She ran her heavy hair through the towel several times, until most of the moisture had been absorbed by it. She put her dark, long, and now slightly damp tresses back into the knots she was accustomed too, before walking back into her bedroom.

She was immediately hit with air that was much colder than the air in her bathroom had been. Shivering, she wrapped the wet towel around her shoulders like a shawl, and hugged it to herself, as she walked over to observe the clothes that had been put out for her. The clothes must have been especially made for her, as they were quite similar to her scavenger garb. They were made of a heavier material more suited to the cold of the ship, and were entirely black, to be more in line with the First Order, and with Kylo Ren's, preferred colors. The strips of cloth that had hung from her belt in her scavenger clothes were also absent. Apart from that, though, they were entirely the same. It consisted of a sleeveless tunic, pants that ended in the middle of her shins, shoes, belt, and hand-arm wraps that went from her knuckles to the bottom of her biceps. Everything fitted her perfectly.

Deciding not to dwell on the how, she moved into the main room of her quarters to wait for Kylo Ren, her _master_ now. To her surprise, she found a quarterstaff leaning against the table. It wasn't hers, which she surmised to still be aboard the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ , but it was close. This one was made of a different metal alloy she wasn't familiar with, but other than that, it was very similar. Lifting it, she felt the weight of it in her hands. It was slightly heavier, but as she twirled it slowly between her hands, she quickly became accustomed to the new weight.

The doors whirred open as she was trying to find the balancing point of the staff, and Kylo Ren, now maskless, again leaned against the door frame. "Do you like it, Rey?" he inquired, staring cautiously at the woman.

"It is suitable," Rey said quietly, shivering at his use of her name. Since she had told him her name in the interrogation room, he had used it nearly every time he addressed her, and it… bothered her. She didn't know what to think of the way her name sounded coming from him. With his mask, her name sounded menacing, like he was threatening her. However, without his mask, it sounded more like a promise. Like he was trying to reassure her.

Despite her thoughts on his use of her name, she also had to suppress the urge to smile. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction that he had done something that had made her happy, even in such dire circumstances. "Is it wise for you to arm your prisoners?" She asked, forcing her face into stoicism.

He sighed, exasperated, "Again, you are no longer a prisoner. You're an apprentice. True, you can't leave, and I'll have to harm you if you try, but as long as you remain on your best behavior you'll have as much freedom as I deem necessary. Nevertheless, you could do no real damage to _me_ , regardless of what weapon I put in your hands." He said, a veiled warning in his words. Suddenly, his face broke out into a smirk. "Also, I know you are pleased with the gift. I can feel your happiness rippling through your thoughts."

Rey rolled her eyes, angry at her own transparency, and the fact that Kylo had been slipping in and out of her dreams and thoughts constantly since her kidnapping. She could keep him out of her memories, because she could feel the pressure, and the pain it caused, when he attempted to get them, but she couldn't tell when he was just in her mind enough to know what she was thinking. Impulsively, she attempted to push back, while trying to remember how she had done it in the interrogation room.

However, before she could consider any consequences, she felt something just barely slip, and was flooded with emotions, and whispers of thoughts. Rey tried to focus in on them, feeling flickers of amusement, pride, but also annoyance and… anger? It seemed out of place to Rey, among the other emotions. The whispers of thoughts continued to blow around her, like the way the wind had sounded when it was blowing through the towering trees on Takodana. She lightly pressed again, trying to focus in on them.

 _'_ _Her color…, force, she must've been covered in dirt. Sand?' …. 'Sun-kissed skin…' …. 'They fit her well.' … 'She likes it'…._ Rey could barely catch his thoughts, they flew by her so fast, but she was overwhelmed with all the images of _her_ that accompanied them. Just as quickly though, the images of her disappeared, and were replaced with different thoughts. _'Undeserving….' … 'Find what you need and…' …. 'Distracted…'_ She felt the same feeling that he had felt, she felt self-loathing, and annoyance, before she suddenly felt surprised, and angered. _'What is… oh fucking hell.'_

Rey, who had taken to staring blankly at his shoulder as she fell into his thoughts, heard the lightsaber coming at her rather than saw it. Quickly reacting, breaking her connection as she did so, she brought up her quarterstaff to block an attack she wasn't even sure was coming. Surely enough though, it connected with his lightsaber, as Kylo Ren was very suddenly nearly within an arm's reach of her. "Do. Not. Do. That." He bit at her, teeth gritted, his face tinted red from the crackling of his lightsaber. Rey could feel the anger coming off of him, even though she was no longer connected to his thoughts and feelings. She could feel it further from the power he had put behind his strike, as she struggled to keep her staff from slipping. Surprisingly, his lightsaber didn't cut through her staff. A property of the different kind of metal, she assumed.

"I wouldn't have tried, if you had stayed out of my head! I was just trying to shut you out! Do you have any idea how infuriating that is? To have you in my head _all_ of the time?" Rey yelled back at him, just as angry at him for making her feel as if this was her fault. _Well, I guess it is, I could have let it be._ She mused to herself, not that she was going to admit that to him.

He stared at her darkly for several moments, before switching off his lightsaber, and straightening up. "Yes. I know exactly how infuriating it is." He said warily, as Rey put her staff back into its sling. She could see that he was distracted, considering something, but before she could ask, he opened the door, and motioned to it. "Follow me, your training begins now."

* * *

Kylo Ren silently sighed to himself, as he stared at his apprentice sitting across from him. She was kneeling, with her head bent at the ground, and her hands resting on her lower thighs. He was in the same position opposite from her. They were in a room a corridor away from their quarters, which was mostly empty, save for several practice droids currently off against the wall. The floor was also covered in synthetic fiber mats, instead of the metal that covered most of the floors of the ship.

Unlike his apprentice, he was not contemplating his emotions. He had planned to work on basic combat first, and then have her focus in on her emotions through meditation, but after her little stunt of invading his mind, he had begun to consider an idea, possibly a very bad one.

The Supreme Leader had never taught Kylo to keep him out of the surface of his mind, for obvious reasons. Snoke did not want him to keep anything hidden. Rey had used this to her advantage and skimmed the surface of his mind, just shallow enough that he could not feel it at all, and didn't notice her until he noticed that her own thoughts were his thoughts. Subsequently, he could not teach her how to keep _him_ out of her mind, as he himself did not know how. But, if they practiced, if they continually invaded the minds of the other, he might just be able to figure out how to detect a shallow mind invasion. ' _There has to be a physical tell, a feeling of pressure, something.'_ Kylo reasoned to himself.

It would be incredibly risky though. If he failed, Snoke could eventually find out that he had made the attempt to block him out. He would also be teaching Rey to keep himself out, which provided a whole new set of risks of what she would keep from him. On the other hand though, he would also be teaching her how to keep Snoke out, which tempted him due to the fact that Snoke would kill her at the first sign that she could not be an asset to him. Kylo scowled to himself, knowing that despite his better judgement, he did not want the girl to die. She was too talented, too powerful, too… interesting to simply let her be murdered.

"Rey?" he inquired quietly, having made his decision. Several seconds passed by, before he tried again. "Rey!" he said, more forcefully this time, attempting to break her out of her meditation. Rey startled at the sound of his loud voice.

"Wha-?" she asked sounding groggy, "What is it?"

Sighing at her, he began. "During your meditations, I've been considering somethi—…. Were you sleeping!?" He asked incredulously. Rey had been rubbing at her eyes, and was now yawning as she stretched her arms behind her back.

"Huh, uh, yeah. Sort of. I guess." She replied, finishing her yawn.

"You were _supposed_ to be meditating on your emotions. Drawing out your anger, sadness, hate, anything, and focus on them with the force!" he exclaimed angrily, as he glared darkly at her. "Did you accomplish anything at all?!"

"Um, not really. I tried to think about things that made me angry, but I got too… well, angry, so I stopped and focused on other things. I guess I fell asleep when I was calming down." She suggested, her voice still heavy with sleep.

"The entire point was for you to bring those emotions, feel them out with your power, incorporate them, and embrace them! Not push them away, and calm yourself down!" he replied, irritated that her exercise, while not exact, was more similar to what Skywalker had told him to do when he was his padawan. Apart from falling asleep, of course.

"By the—it doesn't even matter, that not why I stopped you…. Woke you up." He clarified, just wanting to get this out of the way before he backed out. "Look, you can't keep me out of your immediate thoughts because you can't feel it when I enter. You don't know what to look for. I can't teach you, because I don't either. The Supreme Leader is wise in the ways of the force, but he purposefully did not teach me to keep others out, so I could not keep him out… I would prefer if… if that was not the case. The Supreme Leader would think me stronger if I learned on my own how to keep him out, and he would be forced to trust me more." He explained, wary of what he gave away. "You would benefit as well. You would be able to keep me out, as well as keep out the Supreme Leader, who, as my apprentice, will eventually want you brought before him." He finished, attempting to gauge her reaction.

Rey's jaw was slightly slack-jawed for some time, before she closed her mouth and a huge smile broke out onto her face. "You want to disobey your master!" She said, her tone oddly cheery, considering the potential consequences of his doing so, as well as amazed. "He wants your mind open, and you want to close it to him. And don't think for a second that I believe your reasons for wanting to do so." She replied, her smile turning into a triumphant smirk.

Kylo's expression darkened, "I have no idea what you could possibly be suggesting. For me, this is entirely for the benefit of the First Order." He said, but her words had stung at him. She insinuated that he had thoughts that he wanted to keep from him, and in a way she was right. Her. He needed to keep her from the Supreme Leader. Her thoughts. His thoughts of her.

The Supreme Leader would call on her, and he was terrified that he would not be able to turn her to the Dark side by then. If he failed, Snoke would kill her at the first sign of the Light, which would be obvious if he had access to her mind. It was everywhere there. It shone through her there like a beacon in the dark. Like a fire on a moonless night. If he proved to Snoke that he was strong enough to keep him out, and that he could teach his apprentice to keep others out as well, Snoke would see their command of the Dark side of the Force, and trust them. It would buy Kylo more time in turning her to the Dark side.

"Look," he said, not wanting to think about his weakness, or about the consequences of his possible future failure. "Will you do this, with me, or will you not?"

"You say that like I have a choice." She scoffed. "What happens if I say no?"

"I suppose I would keep invading your mind until you agreed to do so, since you seem to hate it so much. I need this." He admitted. _You need this._ He silently pleaded with her, hoping she wasn't stupid enough to think she would be able to conceal her thoughts from Snoke.

She sighed at him. "Well let's skip the invading my mind part. I'll do it. How do we start?" She inquired.

He smirked at her, thankful for small victories. "We can push others out, but we can't tell when they first enter our thoughts. It's too shallow, and someone skilled enough can press in gently enough that it's unnoticeable. So we practice until we can identify what that gentle pressing is, what it feels like and where, and then we learn how to put up walls with the Force before they can fully slip in. You'll find that it's much easier to keep someone out than it is to push them out, but it's very draining. It's impossible to keep up for more than a minute or two at a time, so it can't be used preemptively. We'd have to know when someone is attempting to invade, and then put walls up, until they stop." He explained the idea to her. "So where do we start? I invade your mind."

Rey sighed again, "Great." She muttered.

* * *

 **A/N: Oh my gosh, I finally got it out. Sorry this took a little longer than I was anticipating. Christmas and whatever happened. Also I lost a day traveling back home. I started writing this chapter two days ago, and I wanted to finish last night, but I just couldn't write anything I was happy with. I could barely think, I was so tired. I tried for about 2 hours and ended up with 2 paragraphs in that time, so I just gave up for the night. Thankfully, today I had a eureka moment about where I was stuck, so here you go :D**

 **Also, I'm still completely dumbfounded by all this feedback! I'm glad the response is overwhelmingly positive, and that most seem to enjoy the way I write! This is the first fic I've ever written, and I don't ever write my own fiction either, so I don't get a whole lot of practice. I'm thrilled that I haven't really gotten any complaints about my style of storytelling, but I'm open to any criticisms, suggestions, or just compliments about what I've done well with writing! Thank you all so much again!**

 **Note about Sith-ness** **: More than one reviewer brought up the "Sith"-ness of Snoke and Kylo Ren. I did think about it briefly when I was writing it, but didn't do any in-depth research on it, and just decided to use it. They are never identified as 'Sith' lords in the movie, but they follow a lot of the same views. So, I've looked into it since, and the Wookiepedia pages for Kylo Ren, Snoke, Sith Lords, and Sith, and it seems that the 'Sith Order' died with Palpatine in VI, and Kylo Ren and Snoke are just force users who utilize the Dark side. Maybe Snoke is trying to revive the Sith Order, but it seems that I used Sith wrongly as an adjective before now. Eventually I suppose I'll go back and change those chapters to not use the word Sith. The title Dark Lord is also related to Sith, but I'll probably keep it because it accurately describes both Snoke and Ren as being powerful dark side force users, but I won't use it as a title.**


	5. Training Each Other

Chapter 5: Training Each Other

Han swore loudly as he accidentally shocked himself trying to repair the fuselage on the Falcon. Rubbing his now burned knuckles, Han sighed to himself and temporarily gave up on the endless repairs. He covered the fuselage, and sat back to lean against the hull of the ship to rest.

"Awwrk?" Chewie called from the other side of the hull.

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine! It's nothin'. Just takin' a break, that's all." Han called back to his mother hen of a first mate.

To put it lightly, Han Solo had not been having a great week. He had wrangled rathtars, and picked up 2 fugitives who had stolen _his_ ship off of Jakku, a disgusting junkyard of a planet, of all places. Then, Bala-Tik with the Guavian Death Gang had boarded his freighter, demanding their money back. They even teamed up with Tasu Leech from Kanjiklub to trap him. As if his miraculous escape from the _Eravana_ hadn't been enough of a day's work for a scoundrel, his fugitives had been carrying a map to his oldest friend, Luke, putting him right back in the conflict he had been running away from.

 _Luke._ His friend who had turned his back on the world because of what _his_ son had done. Han would've have given anything to bring his son back from that bastard Snoke, to bring Luke back. But he was too late. What Ben needed to come back, he had needed a long time ago. Leia could talk until she was hoarse that it was Snoke who took their son, but he knew that the _only_ reason Snoke succeeded in swaying their son was because of his failures. If he had been a better father, more attentive, more affectionate, more caring… if he had only managed to be more of a role model then Darth _fucking_ Vader, they might still have their son. But no, Ben was gone. Now there was only Kylo Ren.

Snoke had the bright scavenger girl now too. He'd seen Ben carry her onto a ship on Takodana. Han shuddered to himself at the thought, not wanting to even begin to think of what Snoke, of what his own son, was doing to her. The poor girl had only just left Jakku for the first time, and she immediately gets kidnapped. Wherever she was, she was probably being tortured within an inch of her life.

Even worse, he had followed the Resistance and Leia back to D'Qar to deliver the droid, forcing him to confront her for the first time since he had run away from the whole mess after what Ben did. The droid didn't even have the full map! They still had no idea where Luke was. And now, to top it all off, he had Mr. Big-Deal coming up to him at all hours of the day demanding to know when they were going to save the girl. This kid, who had been just so eager to abandon the Resistance on Takodana, was now trying to get them to invade their base of operations to save Rey like she was their first priority!

Han sighed to himself. If he was being honest with himself, he wished saving the scavenger girl was a priority to the Resistance, and to Leia. Rey had been a smart and ingenious pilot to escape their pursuers on Jakku, and a competent enough copilot. Not that he would ever tell Chewie that, he would just get jealous. But she appreciated the Falcon for what it was, where it had been. He had been serious about offering her a job, but now, due to no fault of her own, she had been kidnapped.

Han knew that was why the Big Deal was so adamant about getting her back. It had been essentially his fault. From what Han had heard from BB-8, Rey merely took pity on the droid, and then the Stormtrooper had shown up and everything went to shit. She had to steal a ship, leave Jakku, leave her system, and then she got kidnapped. The girl might have been too helpful, too good, for her own safety, but this was hardly her fault.

As if, on cue with his oncoming headache, Big-Deal made an entrance into the Falcon's hangar, and began striding towards Han's ship. "Solo!" Finn called out as he crossed the hangar, "I have an idea about infiltrating Starkiller Base!" he exclaimed as he reached the edge of the ship, craning his neck to see the scoundrel on the hull.

"Narowrrr?!" Chewie asked in excitement. Han rolled his eyes. The big furball had taken an instant liking to the girl, and was almost as insistent on getting her back as Finn was.

"Look Big-Deal, it ain't happening. Both reconnaissance ships we've sent, haven't come back. They died crashing into that base. It's too well protected." Han explained, annoyed that Finn was still trying to make something happen that the Resistance just couldn't do right now. "We'll get to it, but we need to recoup, we need to find the rest of that map to Luke! Until then, we can't risk getting her."

"And how long will that take! She doesn't have long, I've worked on both the Finalizer and Starkiller Base, and I've seen what that knight Kylo Ren does to prisoners! She's going to die if we don't get to her soon… She could already be dead. Or worse." Finn pleaded.

"Raarghhh!" Chewbacca roared angrily, before turning to look at Han expectantly, but after 35 odd years of traveling together, he was an expert at ignoring Chewie's unrealistic wants.

"Listen, kid, we're working on it. But we can't risk it without more information. We'll get it, but we just have to go slower, wait for the First Order to slip up. But we don't even know if she's on that base. We have no idea where she is. But I promise, the first sign, the first opening we get at her… well I'll go get her from wherever she is myself. No matter the cost." Han claimed, putting the matter to rest for now. His son might not be able to be saved, but Rey still could be. If she was still alive, he wouldn't fail her like he had failed his son.

* * *

Across the galaxy, aboard a state-of-the-art star destroyer orbiting the biggest weapon of mass destruction ever conceived, Rey tumbled into her bed, exhausted both mentally and physically. After striking a deal with Kylo, they had spent the rest of their training session wiping their minds blank and focusing on detecting when the other would invade their mind. They had gotten absolutely nowhere. Even when she was focusing on nothing, she just couldn't tell when he slipped into her thoughts. Luckily, he didn't seem to make much progress either. But Rey knew she could get there. She had to, if she wanted any chance of surviving an encounter with Snoke. Despite what she had said to keep herself alive, she would never commit to the Dark side. And she knew that if she ever met Snoke, he probably wouldn't think twice about having her killed if he saw thoughts like _that_ floating around her mind.

Rolling onto her side, she pulled the blanket tighter around her, and forced herself to stop thinking about her imminent death at the hands of an evil raving lunatic. Instead, she thought about her more immediate captor, Kylo Ren. Alone in the dark, Rey didn't even bother forcing her smile down, and she couldn't help but laugh to herself out of a mix of amusement and happiness. Somehow, they had become allies of a sort, in an endeavor to learn to keep their respective masters out of their heads. She was thrilled. If Ren needed her to teach himself this, then he wouldn't just kill her out of a fit of rage, probably. But what amused Rey the most was that her captor was trying to distance his himself from his Supreme Leader. She had witnessed the doubt that infected him in the interrogation room when she broke into his mind. He worried that he could never be as strong as Darth Vader. She couldn't help but wonder if that was because he felt he simply didn't have enough potential in the force, or because he doubted his ability to commit to the Dark side, his ability to be as evil as Darth Vader. If he doubted his abilities, if he regretted giving in to the Dark side, then she might even be able to get his help in escaping the First Order. If she could get him to defect… Rey shook the thought out of her head, she was getting too ahead of herself. The only thing that mattered was getting herself out of here, no one else. Besides, she had next to no experience when it came to making friends. Her only friends had been an annoying droid who essentially forced itself into Rey's life, and Finn, a liar who had almost gotten her killed on Jakku, and was willing to abandon everything on Takodana. No, it was probably in her best interest to not try and acquire an ally, especially not in the form of the Master of the Knights of Ren.

Rey rolled over again, and attempted to sleep, but now that she was thinking about this new development in her captivity, she couldn't fall asleep, despite how exhausted she had been not 15 minutes ago. Another perk of trying to learn to shield Ren from her mind was that she'd be able to hide her escape plan, whenever she got one. Helping him would actually buy her even more time to formulate a plan, escape the clutches of the First Order, and go… somewhere.

Now that she it had crossed her mind, Rey had absolutely no idea what she would do with her freedom. She could go back to Jakku, but she knew her family was never coming back. She knew that hard truth long before Maz had told her, but she had been too terrified to leave the only home she'd ever known, even if it was an awful junkyard of a planet. Despite being alone, things had been familiar and normal there. Leaving meant being alone someplace where she wasn't familiar with anything. Even if she did go back to Jakku, the First Order knew that's where she hailed from. Kylo Ren would look for her there. It would probably be the first place he'd go to look for her.

The more sensible option would be to get to the Outer Rim, and then disappear. If she was being pursued, she'd have to go into hiding, and probably change everything about herself. Hair, clothes, accent, backstory, name, weapon choice, absolutely anything that could identify her she'd have to change if she wanted to evade the notice of the First Order spies all over the galaxy. Even if she could hide from the First Order in the Outer Rim, what would she do? How would she survive? She was pretty much only good at scavenging, piloting, and fixing things. Maybe a starship or speeder repair depot? She could probably do that for the next 60 odd years, right?

Rey sighed to herself and rolled over. No, she would never be able to do that. Not now that she had awakened to this power that surged through her very being. She couldn't just ignore its existence. And the only viable place to get training was right here, with the First Order. The Last Jedi had been missing for years.

Suddenly, Rey remembered the map, the one that her captor wanted so desperately from her. She could go and find the Resistance, in the Ileenium system. If she prepared enough, she could bring them all sorts of valuable information. Kylo Ren had mentioned during her interrogation that they had recovered the rest of the map from archives of the old Galactic Empire. She could find it, escape, and bring it to the Resistance. Then they'd be able to find Luke Skywalker, and she could learn the ways of the force from someone who didn't threaten to kill her every other day.

But how could she ever even get the map? Rey was fairly certain that if she just asked her master for access to the archives of the old empire, he would probably want to know why. If Kylo Ren had already assembled the rest of the map, he probably would have it stored somewhere. Probably somewhere safe. And guarded. But if she knew where it was, she could steal it, steal a ship, and escape to the Resistance.

The plan had its fair share of holes and gaps and general lapses in good judgement, but she promised herself she would revisit the idea, and fill in those gaps when she could keep her master out of her head. Probably. Or she would just wing it when it came time to escape. But for now, her mind finally let herself succumb to her exhaustion, and she slowly drifted into unconsciousness.

* * *

Sleep would not come to Kylo Ren. After sending Rey back to her quarters, he had tried to meditate, but found his mind too full of… well full of thoughts. Of _her_. He hadn't been able to read her thoughts during their training, since she had been keeping her mind blank while attempting to feel his invasions. But he knew what she would be thinking. She'd be thinking that he was weak. That he doubted himself.

Wielding his lightsaber, he yelled in frustration as he destroyed the various training droids that surrounded the training area. _She. Is. Right!_ He thought, despising himself at the truth of it. He did doubt himself. He doubted his ability to earn the Supreme Leader's trust and admiration.

No. He doubted that he even wanted that trust and admiration anymore. He had made his choice, declared his allegiances, when he and his Knights of Ren had destroyed the last of Skywalker's legacy. So why was he beginning to doubt himself? He was continuing the legacy of his grandfather, he was succeeding, even if Skywalker wasn't dead yet.

But her words had affected him. _'You're afraid… that you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader!'_ Her words echoed in his mind as he destroyed the last of the training dummies and just started striking the wall. He knew he never would be as strong as his grandfather, not until he fully severed his connection to the Light. Parts of him still regretted betraying his uncle, and still wanted to go back and try and make things right. That feeling was holding him back. That feeling was all the more amplified when _she_ was around. She was just so naturally drawn to the Light. From what he had seen of her thoughts and memories since taking her prisoner, she was full of kindness and empathy, even if the scavenger in her knew those emotions to be useless and draining. She helped everyone in need who crossed her path with hardly a second thought.

Having abused the walls until he was slightly calmer, Kylo sheathed his lightsaber and began pacing the room. If he could just bring her to the Dark side, he could remove some of that temptation to redeem himself. If she couldn't be converted… well he could always just kill her. Couldn't he?

Filled with self-loathing at the doubt in him that she had identified and exacerbated so quickly, Kylo Ren left the training room finally, and returned to his quarters. He flinched as the girls force signature fluctuated briefly. Asleep and dreaming already, it would seem. He would have to get her to meditate properly, if he kept her alive, to minimize the uncontrolled affect her dreams had on the force around her. Her dreams made sleeping nearly impossible for him. It was like trying to fall asleep next to starship with its thrusters going at 100%. Thankfully, he was too exhausted from training for it to bother him as much as it had the night before.

However, as he undressed and slipped into his own bed, he couldn't help but to look into her mind for what must've been the hundredth time that day. But all he saw was the same nightmare from the previous night. Frustrated at the girl's unrelenting fear of the Dark side, he slipped back out of her mind, and committed himself to falling asleep.

* * *

"This is pointless!" Rey argued, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

It had been a week since she had begun her training, and they had made barely any progress in their endeavor to keep each other's invasions at bay. Effectively, the only thing Rey had learned was how to 'meditate', or, as she saw it, work herself up and make herself pointlessly angry at something, and then hit the training dummies until she felt better. She had tried to argue against wasting their time on it, but her, very tired, master was insistent that she spend time meditating every day.

"We've made no progress, and if I spend another day thinking about nothing, I'm liable to go insane." She continued. Well, it wasn't entirely true. Two days ago, after focusing through what must have been thousands of invasions, she had finally begun to feel them coming. She had first noticed it as a pressure in her temples. She had assumed she was just getting a headache, but then the feeling would go away, and come back in a pattern. To test it, she insisted they switch so she would invade his mind as he tried to detect her. She didn't feel the pressure on her temples the entire time, until they switched again, and then it was there again. A light push, so short it was almost a pulse, was usually all she felt before she figured he had broken through and was in her thoughts.

But since that breakthrough, nothing had changed. No matter how hard she tried to push back, she had made no progress in actually keeping him out, as he would just break into her mind regardless. He had assured her when they started that preemptively keeping someone out was easier than pushing someone out who was already in, even if it was impossible to maintain for more than a few minutes. However, she had found no success with it so far.

Even worse, from what she could tell, Kylo had actually completely succeeded in keeping her out of his mind. He had apparently also pinpointed the same sensation she had, and could deflect her attempts to invade his mind before she could get in. To her, it felt like banging her head against a wall. Had she been standing the first time he succeeded, she was certain she would've fallen over.

"Yes, it all does seem rather hopeless with you, doesn't it? Perhaps I was wrong to think you strong in the Force." He mused, smirking at her in amusement as he teased her. "You very likely just need more practice with using the Force physically, before you will become adept enough to use it the way you want mentally. You'll probably naturally develop the ability to put up mental walls as you practice." He reassured her as she picked herself up off the ground and began to pace in front of him.

What he said made sense, but she was worried about what that entailed. With the feelings the meditation had brought on, she was becoming increasingly worried about how much of herself she was giving to the Dark side. She had to admit that her meditations made her feel good, and gave her clarity of thought after all of the anger had passed. She was even sleeping better, as her nightmares had become much less sharp in her mind. She hardly even remembered them. But she felt herself more prone to her own anger and emotions getting the better of her before she realized it. The patience she had a week ago with their training was gone, and she was infuriated with herself just a couple of hours in.

"What now then? If I need to train with using the Force physically, what do I learn next?" She asked with a sigh, pushing past the fears she had.

"Well you're already somewhat trained with using a staff in combat, so we can skip over that. We'll come back to it eventually with a more formal training, but for now you know enough to keep yourself alive." He stated, standing up from his kneeling position. "To improve your abilities with the Force, you'll continue your meditations, focusing on that power as you do so. You'll also practice with manipulating objects physically. We'll start small, but eventually you should be able to lift an enti—" The knight was cut off by the sound of the training room door opening.

A red haired young man stepped through doorway into the room. He was dressed in the uniform of a First Order officer. Looking at Kylo, she got the impression that he knew the uniformed man, as he straightened up and looked at him coldly. "General Hux." He greeted coldly.

"Ren." The man greeted back, just as icily. His inquisitive gaze came to rest on Rey, and she shuddered involuntarily. "I take it this is the scavenger girl you've… taken on?" He inquired, his voice almost slimy to Rey. "No wonder you chose to keep her as you're prisoner," he stated, not waiting for her master to answer his question. "She's much more… appealing to the eye than I would've imagined possible for someone from a backwater like Jakku." He stated, practically leering at her.

Rey glared at the floor, deciding that it was probably in her best interest to not retaliate against him for speaking about her like she was a decoration to be appraised. She could still feel his gaze burning into her skin, but at least she didn't have to look into it.

Kylo Ren moved to stand in front of Hux, effectively blocking her from the man's view. "Did you need something, Hux? Or did you just come here to ogle the girl?" He asked, clearly aggravated.

The general laughed cruelly, "And what if I did, Ren?" He retorted, some unspoken challenge in his voice. He paused for a moment to smirk at her master, whose expression Rey couldn't see from her vantage point. "No, I came here because the Supreme Leader has summoned you." He stated, his smirk growing even wider.

"I see. I'll attend to it immediately." Kylo stated dismissively. The general's smirk turned into a glare, as he nodded and left the room. "I'll have the guards escort you to your quarters immediately, Rey." He told her, seemingly distracted.

The guards appeared from the hallway at his command, and escorted her out into the hallway, before she could protest. "Wait—Kylo! What's happening?" Rey called to him as he retreated down to the other end of the hallway, away from her. But he didn't turn around and answer, and only minutes later the guards had her back in her rooms.

Feeling like a pit had opened up in her stomach, Rey paced her small sitting room. She didn't know why, but she knew she had very suddenly become very frightened for Kylo Ren. For the only potential ally she currently had, she realized. She couldn't know if he would need it or not, but Rey found herself desperately hoping that their training had paid off.

* * *

 **A/N: What. In the ham sandwich. 550 follows? Over 23,000 views? Close-ish to 100 reviews?! You guys are all so da bomb-diggity. I don't even know what that is, but YOU ARE IT, baby. It feels weird to know that something I wrote is being read by that many people. Like, damn.**

 **Anyways, hope y'all liked the new chapter, threw in some exposition about what's going on with the Resistance, being not much, I'll probably write a section from a non Kylo/Rey POV once every couple of chapters, just so if the Resistance does ever do anything, it won't be from out of nowhere. You, the reader, will know what's coming, even if Kylo/Rey don't. Did it from Han's point of view because he's between Leia and Finn, so he knows what Finn wants and what the Resistance is doing. Hoping I wrote him well. Pretty sure I crushed my interpretation of Chewie though.**

 **Next time: Kylo's encounter with Snoke! Kylo/Rey development! And so much (some) more! Here's to a Happy New Year!**


	6. A Common Enemy

**A/N: Soooo. I'm back…. 18 months later. In short my excuses are, the spring 2016 semester, an internship in summer 2016, the fall 2016 semester, and then the spring 2017 semester. But now I'm back, and don't have an internship, and have all summer to continue this story, which I will endeavor to do so. I reread my story to try and remember where I was going with this, as I lost the original chapter 6 I was working on. But I'm relatively pleased with where this went.**

 **So, cheers! Onward and forward!**

Chapter 6: A Common Enemy

Poe Dameron wasn't the simplest of men, but he wasn't what one would call overly complicated either. This would be extremely evident to any passerby observing him in his current state, lying in the shade of his X-wing, his trusty droid BB-8 whirring nearby, and enjoying a ham and cheese sandwich as if it was a succulent and juicy bantha steak.

He didn't have the easiest of lives at the moment, what with being a squadron leader of the Resistance during a time when the First Order had a weapon of mass destruction capable of putting an end to entire systems with a single use. But here, outside in the sunlight, lying on soft grass, his ship overhead, droid by his side, and an amazing sandwich – well he was content to live in this peaceful moment for as long as it would last him.

"Dameron!" A voice shouted from somewhere not too far away, bringing the young pilot out of his peaceful moment. Recognizing the voice as the one belonging to the former Stormtrooper turned Resistance ally, Finn, he sat up and took another bite of his sandwich as he watched his friend stride up to him. "Poe, you gotta help me convince them that we need to act now, before its too late, and she's lost forever – I mean, I can't even imagine what he's doing to her – she could already be dead! But we have to try, we can't just leave her there after she was basically forced into this – I mean it's not even her fault and what - "

"What are you – hold up there Finn, what in blazes are you talking about?!" Poe asked incredulously, wondering what in the world was happening in front of him right now as the solider paced back and forth, waving his hands wildly while talking non-stop.

"Rey!" he replied forcefully, suddenly coming down to sit cross-legged and be on eye-level with the pilot. "We have to save her, Poe. She's in the hands of Kylo Ren, and you've met him before, you know exactly how much danger she's in!"

Poe grimaced to himself remembering his encounter with the Force user on Jakku, and his subsequent unpleasant interrogation aboard the Finalizer before Finn sprung him free. This girl however, Rey, he wasn't familiar with outside of what Finn had told him and General Organa after they first arrived back on D'Qar. This woman, Rey, had found his droid and helped BB-8 and Finn escape Jakku when the First Order started their search for himself and the droid. But she had been kidnapped during the attack on Takodana. If only he had known her then, he might have been able to direct his squadron to protect her from the feared leader of the Knights of Ren. The pilot couldn't help but feel guilty for her capture. It was his droid who drew attention to her in the first place.

"This girl – Rey?" Poe probed inquisitively. Finn nodded. "What does she look like?"

"What does – what? Why? Why does it, uh, why does it matter what she looks like?" Finn replied hesitantly.

"I'm just wondering what I'm looking for here?" Poe replied sincerely, before his face broke into a mischievous grin. "She cute?" He asked, fairly confident that he already knew the answer.

"What – uh, well" the soldier was taken-aback by the question, "I mean, I don't really have a lot of experience – I mean I just haven't met a lot of different, you know, women, who didn't have masks on, and so I can't really say. Not that, it's not that she's not, not cute, you know what I mean?" He replied trying to figure out what he had even just said.

"No. I absolutely don't know what you mean." Poe replied succinctly, his smirk broadening at Finn's inability to explain himself. "Which brings me back to my first question: What does she look like?"

"She's, well, she has brown hair, and, uh, brown eyes. Well probably, I think, I can't really remember." Finn attempted to explain, trying to think about the last time he was close to her, when she was trying to convince him to stay on Takodana.

"You don't even remember what her eyes look like?" Poe asked mockingly. "Are you even sure we're talking about a woman? Or did you get that messed up too?"

"They were green!" He replied, suddenly remembering. "Well green… ish-brown? Hazel, I guess? Yeah, hazel! And yes, she's definitely a woman!" Finn shot back.

"Ok, so, brown hair, hazel eyes, woman. Hey, we're down to three, maybe only two trillion different women that could describe in the galaxy. Keep it coming. How tall, what kind of hairstyle, what did she wear, any other defining features you're leaving out?" Poe pressed, hoping to get past this so they could get to an actual plan.

Finn thought for a second before replying. "She's shorter than I am, but about the same height as you I think? Maybe a touch shorter, I'd have to see you side by side. Her hair was pulled back into some sort of knot-style. Split into three knots down the back of her head. It's probably very long when its loose. Her clothes were tan, and she had arm guards. She carried around a staff about the size of her! She was very good with it, knocked me to the ground when BB-8 had her chase me down. She had light skin, but her voice wasn't very high. It was a bit deeper than would probably be usual, I guess? She looks like she's all skin and bones, but she's pretty strong and -" Finn rambled on about what little he could actually remember of her.

"That's enough! OK…" Poe cut him off and mulled over the information for a second. "So, you want us to, what? Fly to First Order territory and aimlessly look around for her by sneaking either onto their planet or one of their star destroyers, of which we have no idea which she'll be on?"

"Well, I mean, we can't just sit here and do nothing while she's imprisoned!" Finn argued.

Poe looked away from Finn and into the sky, attempting to work out a plan. After a long moment, he looked back to Finn and shrugged, "Alright. Come with me." Poe stood up and started walking towards one of the less used hangars.

"Wait – What?" Finn questioned the pilot's back as he walked away from him.

"We're gonna go sneak into First Order space, let's go." Poe replied without looking back.

The soldier sat slack-jawed for a moment, then stood up and ran after him into the hangar.

* * *

Rey had been pacing worryingly around her quarters for only a few minutes, uselessly attempting to feel for Kylo's mind and get some sense of what was happening, before she heard the locks unclick in her door. She rushed to her front room wondering what the Supreme Leader could have said in such a brief time that her master would be back so quickly, before letting out a surprised gasp as someone who was decidedly not Kylo Ren stepped in.

The man that Kylo had referred to as General Hux in the training room stood before her, with a disapproving scowl on his face. "You'll have to forgive my manners, Miss, for having intruded on your quarters." His slimy voice didn't sound the least bit apologetic despite his words, and it sent an involuntary shiver down her spine. He motioned for her to sit down at the metal table, and not seeing what else she could do as the guards closed the door, locking the two of them inside, she took a seat. The general took the other seat opposite her, and spent a few moments more studying her before speaking again. "So, you're Ren's new protégé." He asked, disdain dripping from his voice, making clear his disapproval for both her and her master. "Impolite as he is, he failed to introduce us properly. What is your name?" He asked, smirking at her discomfort.

She stared at him, not knowing what to do, and hoping that Kylo would somehow show up and save her from whatever this was. Luckily, the moment she found herself wishing for that, she became annoyed with herself and found her voice. "It's Rey." She replied haughtily.

The general's smirk grew wider at her change in body language, as it went from concerned to rebellious. "Rey? Now that is a very pretty name. From an unexpectedly pretty scavenger." He leered at her from across the table, taking a moment to think to himself and unsettle her further.

"I have a wonder." He said, not directly to her she thought, but more to the room, as if he thought he was giving a speech to many others. "I wonder if your pretty name, pretty face, your pretty voice has seduced our Lord of the Knights of Ren into protecting you from the First Order." General Hux said, picking his words deliberately. "I wonder, and doubt, that you have ever seen this map to Skywalker, as Lord Ren claimed when he abandoned his search for the droid, and brought you alone onboard." Turning his gaze back to her, his smirk disappeared, and his eyes became serious, "How else could it be, that after a week of being here, he still has not pried the map from you? It must be that you have never seen it, and have tricked him into protecting you!" He finished, glaring accusingly at her.

Rey found that her annoyance quickly turned into fear as the General became angrier and the color of his face turned closer to the color of his hair. "I have seen the map, it's just -" She started to explain, before she was cut off.

"Is that so?" He sneered at her, before pulling out a datapad he had with him, and a stylus. "Then draw it. Now." Hux commanded. "I won't have Ren's inability to get information from you tarnish my reputation in the eyes of the Supreme Leader."

Rey hopelessly stared at the datapad on the table. Thinking to when BB-8 had shown them the map on the Millennium Falcon, she knew she didn't perfectly remember what it looked like. Even if she could remember it in perfect detail, she still wouldn't have been able to give up the location of the last Jedi, and ruin the efforts of the Resistance forever. She wouldn't have been able to live with herself.

"I'm sorry." She said pleadingly. "I've seen it, but I can't remember it in perfect detail. I'm not able to draw it."

Quicker than she could react or notice what was happening, Hux stood from his seat and swung his arm at her. His hand hit its mark, and with enough force that Rey fell sideways out of the chair she was in and hit the floor, hard. Rey gasped for breath as she raised her hand to touch the right side of her face, now burning where Hux had hit her. She had fallen too fast to brace herself, and her weight had ground her left hip into the floor. Her thoughts immediately went to the staff leaning against the wall near her bed in the next room. Cursing herself for putting it down, she began to move to dash to her room for it.

She looked up just in time to see Hux throw the light metal table and chairs aside, before tackling her and putting one hand around her neck, while his other hand grabbed her hands and nearly wrenched her arms out of her sockets to pin them to the ground above her head. "You will not trick me like you tricked that arrogant fool!" He screamed at her, before grinding one of his knees first under and then up into her ribs, causing her to scream out in pain, as she felt her ribs begin to bend in ways that bones should not. "You cannot hide your ignorance from me! I will not tolerate your uselessness as he does! You will die before you can lead us further astray!"

* * *

Kylo Ren, now in his full mask and robes, paced up and down the communication chamber, waiting for the Supreme Leader to show himself. He internally practiced putting up barriers around his mind, hoping it would be enough to keep the Supreme Leader out, should he begin to pry. He found himself unable to focus though, his thoughts drifting to what would happen to his apprentice, to Rey, should the Supreme Leader find his progress unsatisfactory. Or should the Supreme Leader find him out of line for attempting to keep him out of his mind.

As the minutes ticked by, he found his emotions to be uncharacteristic. He tried to clear his mind, but he found himself concerned. Rapidly, and seemingly without any trigger, his concern turned to fear and then very quickly to annoyance. Before he could pin down what was causing the annoyance, the fear had returned. He found himself feeling very apologetic soon after, but couldn't figure out what for.

He grimly realized that its source could be his own disappointment in himself, for not staying true to his grandfather's vision, for having somehow strayed away from his path. He pondered the possibility for only a moment, before being hit with a blinding pain, that left him doubled over. Echoing in his head, he heard a scream. Her scream, he knew instinctively, immediately.

Realizing that the Supreme Leader had never summoned him, Ren stood, embracing the waves of anger that rushed over him as he unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and yelled. Harnessing his rage, he stomped towards the other end of the ship, to his apprentice.

* * *

Rey screamed out again as she was thrown against the discarded metal table. She could taste blood, and had heard a second one of her ribs crack, to go with the one Hux had broken pushing his knee into her. She tried to stand but fell over, her vision distorted and blurring with the pain. She tried to keep her gaze on the general. She could hear his laughing, thoroughly enjoying the pain he was inflicting before he ended her life.

Suddenly, her vision cleared, and the pain all but disappeared into the background, as an intense shudder of anger racked her body. She hissed as the anger intensified and grew closer, before attempting to stand again.

Not sensing the change in her, Hux lifted one of his legs high before kicking her in the chest as she tried to stand, thrusting her back over the metal table which wrenched another scream from her as she crumpled against it.

Hux moved towards her, ready to kick her again and probably collapse a lung, when the door blew open off its hinges, hitting him and knocking him against the wall. Catching his breath, Hux pushed the door off him, and pulled out his blaster ready to shoot whichever of the guards was stupid enough to intervene. However, he found himself facing Kylo Ren instead, who threw up his hand, and Hux's blaster flew from him and clattered uselessly against the wall.

The last things Rey heard and saw as blood filled her mouth, and unconsciousness pulled her down, was the sight of General Hux being lifted off the ground by nothing, and being thrown against the opposite wall multiple times, and the domineering figure of Kylo Ren, his lightsaber tinting the room red and crackling loudly.

* * *

 **A/N: There we go. Now we're back on track!**

 **Reuploaded: added line breaks that didn't between pov shifts. Sorry!**


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